Frames/Perspectives

When one has been stuck in a depressing environment for too long, when things keep turning worse and worse, when established authority keep behaving more and more autocratically, one cannot help feeling trapped in a losing battle, with no reason for optimism in any direction.   

One may not be completely unaware that there are other places one can escape to.  But those alternatives sound remote, alien, …, an admission of defeat, even abandonment of one’s friends and principles. Hence unattractive. 

At this point, spending some time in an alternate community may offer fresh perspectives.  Suddenly, or gradually, alternate communities and issues do not sound so distant or alien anymore.  The world seems bigger, or more connected than before.  The timeframe may become longer.  Instead of months and years, one ay start to consider history in terms of decades and centuries.  Instead of an eye-level perspective, one may see things from above, way above.  Human pettiness may really appear to be just that - pettiness, and no longer worthy of wasting too much of one’s time and attention on it.  

In a way, it is a matter of how one “frames” an issue or situation.  What are the important values?  What are the relevant constraints?  What are the major cause-and-effect relationships?  What is the most useful mental model for imagining alternative actions and consequences?   

Switching places and communities for a while may help one select a different and more effective frame/mental model for the same issue.  One may end up truly moving away.  Or one may choose to return, but with a new perspective, a new frame to tackle the same issues with.  The suffering may acquire a new meaning and engender new determination.  New insights and innovative actions may materialise and offer new hope.